


Soonest Mended

by FionaSo, waffleguppies



Category: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Shaiman/Shaiman & Wittman/Greig
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-29
Updated: 2020-09-30
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:00:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 19,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26719435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FionaSo/pseuds/FionaSo, https://archiveofourown.org/users/waffleguppies/pseuds/waffleguppies
Summary: It's the end of a very long day, for everyone concerned. Willy is used to shaping the world around him exactly how he wants it to be, but with Charlie and his family in the picture, he will need to face up to some hard truths, a few awful mistakes, and at least one truly terrible first impression... just to get through the evening.This story takes place after my two shorter one-shots, the Forgery and the Coupon, and is set right after the Golden Ticket tour.
Comments: 10
Kudos: 8





	1. Chapter 1

The facade of the Wonka factory was bathed in the gentle beginnings of a day near its end, and the gathered crowd below it was pressed against its gates, their voices lowered to a deep hum, making gentle, rhythmic clouds that carried in the still air of early October. Charlie could see the crowd as he passed the windows, the small specks of light from their cameras and open phones went in and out like the meandering warbles of fireflies.Charlie followed Mr. Wonka across catwalks, up ladders, through rooms upon rooms without any chance to stop and take all of it in. That this factory was now _his,_ and that he could see any of it anytime he wanted, was so strange a thought that it hadn’t really taken hold yet and instead Charlie felt an unfounded fear that if he didn’t look now he may never get a chance to again.  
  
A tall room with floating fizz, a hallway of wallpapers, a library of every flavor- Charlie itched to know and see each one, even as hunger panged away at his insides.  
  
Charlie was used to hunger, if anyone can ever be said to be used to such a thing. It was a sharp, ever-present ache that he made do with and arranged himself around. For instance, he left early every day to school so that he never had to run. During recess and lunch, he slept. And, in the last month, he had found the candy shop at the end of his street to be a safe, warm place to stay before returning to the inevitable cold of his own drafty home.  
  
But today, Charlie hadn’t been able to stick to any of his usual routines, and his body was more than willing to let him know it.  
  
As Mr. Wonka lead he chatted, and again Charlie felt the nagging suspicion he'd first come to when he laid eyes on Mr. Wonka: that he and Mr. Williams were in fact the same person. But he still felt some apprehension about addressing it at all; foolish and stupid that it could even be true. So he didn’t mention it, and pressed on with the man through the factory, too excited by all that was around him anyway to really consider himself at all.

And Mr. Wonka kept up the pace, just as he had during the tour, drawing Charlie after him at a breakneck rate which was sometimes a jog and sometimes a skip and sometimes a stride but never, ever an ordinary walk. They passed storerooms and doorways that hummed with hidden machinery, navigated hallways that started cramped and ended up the size of city halls, walked a long scaffold over a deep blue well of air in which pale cobwebs of spun sugar eddied about in a gentle breeze, and stopped at last in front of a set of elevator doors that wouldn’t have been out of place in a nice hotel.

“Nothing great or glass about this one, I’m afraid,” said Mr. Wonka, pressing the call button. There was a bronze dial above the doors, a big arrowed half-circle that would have looked exactly like something out of an old movie if the numbers on the dial had been in the traditional order. One of them was a Q. “Just a regular old elevator, back to the top floors. Well, come along, Bucket,” he added, looking back with a grin as the doors slid open. Charlie was a little further behind than he expected, and he raised an eyebrow, holding the sliding doors with his cane. “Your family will probably be waiting for an explanation.”

“Sorry, Mr. Wonka!” Charlie panted, pulling his scarf another turn about his neck, and stepped quickly into the elevator. The exterior doors closed with a mechanical sort of knock before Mr. Wonka dragged the interior accordion gate across it and busied himself with the elevator controls- a large brass panel with an equally large lever, and a curly, fanciful logo at the top which simply read: _Otis._

The elevator swiftly began its ascent, smooth and without much fanfare except for the whirring of pulleys somewhere above them.

Charlie hadn’t any idea what he was going to tell his family. The whole day had been a tumultuous affair, and while normally he would have loved to be the one to excitedly regale them with every detail, just this once he sincerely hoped that someone else, Grandpa Joe or Mr. Wonka, was going to be more than happy to explain instead.

Charlie felt a wave of light-headedness and steadied himself against the old elevator’s rail. He blinked, stared at Mr. Wonka’s brightly buttoned, anachronistic shoes, then looked up at the man himself and smiled.

“I’m so excited for you to meet them, sir.”

“Lose the ‘sir’, would you? Makes me feel like a schoolmaster out of Dickens or something.”

Willy’s generally boundless enthusiasm felt a little strained at the concept of having to wrangle three more old people and a mother, after a full day of herding four uniquely awful adults and their offspring around his factory. His expectations had been low, and they’d all turned out so much worse… although, admittedly, also much more entertaining. That was the thing about most people, the thing that made it worth interacting with them- you could never predict the exact flavour of car-crash they would turn out to be. The other parents had all been quite _‘fun,’_ in their own ghastly ways, but you could certainly have too much of a bad thing.

That morning, he’d been more than interested in meeting Charlie’s mother. Although the existence of a boy like Charlie did not necessarily indicate the existence of a good parent, _post hoc ergo propter hoc,_ he’d been eager to find out what the mother of such a bright spark would be like.

And it had turned out that the answer was a mother who couldn’t even be bothered to accompany her son on the most important day of his life. In their turn, he’d spied Augustus’s mother, Veruca’s father, Violet’s father, Mike’s mother… and Charlie’s grandfather, who’d been essentially bedridden for four decades, according to the boy.

On reflection, Willy was now _more_ than interested in meeting the sort of mother who had such interesting personal priorities that she’d forced her nonagenarian father-in-law out of bed to take her place. Such a person, he thought, might be even more ‘ _fun’_ than Ethel Teevee.

He tapped out a thoughtful little shave-and-a-haircut on the dome of his cane as the elevator rose, the cage thrumming gently as the wall of the shaft slid by. Charlie looked a bit pale... shaky, almost. The kid couldn’t be that nervous, surely?

“Don’t worry about your family. If they’re anything like Grandpa Joe, I’m sure we’ll get along like a house on fire,” he said, blithely.

Charlie had stifled his automatic response of ‘yes, sir’ and instead gave a nod while he tried to untangle Mr. Wonka’s meaning.

As the elevator continued upward, he recalled Grandpa Joe and Mr. Wonka, fists up, ready to strike one another. And with the thought of that violence came more of the same: Mike’s desperate run as he searched for an exit, the small glimpses of Veruca’s pink dress buried beneath a cluster of squirrels, the look on Mr. Beauregard’s face as he held Violet’s shoes, Mrs. Gloop’s desperate cries for her son.

_You’ve seen what happens to children who break the rules in my factory, haven’t you?_

Yes. Charlie had seen what happened to the children… and their parents.

Charlie knew, or thought he knew on some level, that Mr. Wonka had been messing with him in the Imagining Room. But, the very real tragedies that had befallen each child and their parent belied that instinctive trust that came so naturally to him. Charlie wasn’t very good at lying, and he wasn’t used to people lying to him, so trying to separate the fact from the fiction of what had occurred, of what this man said and did, was a difficult puzzle he hadn’t quite worked out. He trusted Mr. Wonka, there was no question about that, but he would be lying to himself if he said he understood exactly why.

Charlie tried to find a way to word his question as he watched the arrow at the top of the elevator slip past a picture of a shoe, past the curious Q, turning more and more until it was almost at the very end of its run before he finally spoke up, asking:

“If you don’t get along with them, are they going to get hurt?”

The elevator came to a jarring halt.

To say the question took the wind out of Mr. Wonka’s sails would have been an understatement. He let go of the elevator’s control lever and turned to look at Charlie, and although he didn’t look quite so full of consternation and dismay as he had when Charlie had pretended (for half a second) that he couldn’t accept his offer, it was a close-run thing.

“No,” he said. “No, I- Charlie, nobody got hurt today because I didn’t _get along_ with them, they…” He gestured, trying to shape his point into some visible, tangible form, something the boy could easily understand. This didn’t seem to help him, and instead he looked up at the elevator ceiling, as if he might find the answer written in the fancy brass scrollwork. There was nothing useful up there, either, and so he focused on Charlie again, with an expression so grave as to be nearly unrecognizable.

“Nothing is going to happen to your family,” he said. “That’s a promise.”

And that was why he trusted Mr. Wonka. Though he couldn’t entirely grasp it, Charlie understood that the man speaking to him here and now, with such a meaningful and serious look on his face, was who Mr. Wonka _was_. More _him_ than the man who had given the tour was, and certainly more _him_ than the man Charlie suspected him to have played- the odd, prickly shopkeeper who had poked fun at him in that warm, sweet-smelling shop, which felt so far away now that it could have been a whole other lifetime ago or something like a dream.

Charlie nodded, and bit his lip.

“It’s not that I thought _you_ would hurt them, Mr. Wonka. I don’t think you meant what happened to Augustus, or Veruca or- or any of them. But it’s just-” Charlie raised his hands up in a shrug and smiled, “-it’s been a _really_ confusing day.”

And before he could say anything, Charlie took Mr. Wonka's much larger hand in his.

"I think they’re really going to like you. Especially my mom. She’ll think you’re great," he enthused.

It had certainly been a confusing day. Willy had worked very hard to make it that way, in his own cavalier fashion, and the idea that everything he’d done had combined to make Charlie afraid of what he might do, or worse, actually afraid of him, was a concept that had barely occurred to him, hadn’t even crossed his mind since he’d asked _Anyone want to go home?_ and Charlie had readily denied it, with all the others. But it wasn’t just the mysterious Mr. Willy Wonka who could say one thing and mean another, and _that,_ well, that was a nasty thing to think about, here and now-

-But then Charlie took his hand, the second time that he’d done so unprompted, and just as before, it shook him clear of the poisonous thought, drew him back to the world with a startled blink and a wondering, spontaneous smile. With his cane under his arm, he dragged aside the elevator’s inner cage and outer door with his free hand, and they stepped out of the elevator together.

The hallway was quite wide and open, decorated in a soft blue. It also wasn’t empty. A small contingent of Oompa-Loompas were waiting for the elevator, Haava among them. The older Loompa wasn’t quite as tall as Charlie, but he had a gravitas that set him apart.

“We wondered where you’d got to. Everything okay?”

“Of course! Everything’s excellent. Wonderful! Couldn’t be better.”

Haava raised an eyebrow at Charlie. “When he dusts off the thesaurus, you know he’s nervous.”

“Uh, objection?” Mr. Wonka held up a hand, like an attorney in court. “Untrue, misstating evidence, and leading the witless. Charlie, we didn’t have time earlier, but this is Haava- Paloma- Theo- Milo- Atticus-”

“Atty,” objected someone, from the back.

“Atty, this week- and Perdia.” He squeezed Charlie’s hand, as if to shore him up against the whirlwind of new names. “And everyone, well... you already know Charlie Bucket.”

A quiet fell over the group as everyone looked to Charlie expectantly. Some of the Oompas at the back even craned their necks, and another bobbed up and down, all of them trying to get a better eyeful of the rather shabbily-clothed boy before them.

Charlie took in the group and felt the same way he had in front of the reporters. He didn’t search for some witty thing to say, or explode in confidence. He did as he was always taught to do when addressing someone new, and asked quite politely:

“Uh… How do you do?”

And like with the press, there was silence for a moment. Charlie couldn’t help but feel that he was being assessed and, not for the first time that day, he felt he would really appreciate knowing the metric being used. Then the Oompa-Loompa that Mr. Wonka had introduced as Haava looked him up and down and said:

“Well, how do you do! I like this kid!”

And the other Oompa-Loompas whooped, some jumped, and all of them careened up to him to shake his hand and welcome him into the fold.

While Charlie was busy being greeted, Perdia walked calmly over to Willy, arms crossed as she surveyed the boy, a grin a mile wide and nearly getting his arm enthusiastically shaken clear off by Milo.

“You sure about this one? It looks like if you dropped him wrong he’d shatter.”

Willy, with half an eye on the others, winced slightly as Charlie- who’d only just managed to get his hand back- was almost knocked off his feet by a cordial thump on the back from Theo. “Well, we’re not _going_ to ‘drop him wrong,’ Perdia, he’s a kid, not a hacky-sack.”

“Yeah,” said Perdia, thoughtfully. She raised her voice.

“Hey! Fun-size!”

Charlie looked up, brightly.

“How old are you? Eight?”

“Oh, I- I was eleven just last week!”

Perdia glanced at Willy. “That Augustus kid was nine,” she said, quietly.

 _“Riveting_ factoid, but let’s leave the vital statistics to Craigory for the moment, shall we?” Easily, in full motion once more, Willy dodged by Perdia, rescued the boy from the friendly, curious throng of Loompas, and shepherded him forwards. “Charlie, come along, we mustn’t keep your family waiting. Everyone...”

He half-turned, hesitating, ironing out an uncertain little twist of his mouth as he caught Perdia’s eye. “Thank you,” he finished, simply, without affectation. “I’ll be down later.”

Charlie and Mr. Wonka took leave of the small group, rounded a corner down the hall and came to a very plain door with an unfussy letter ‘B’ tacked to the front of it.

Mr. Wonka gave two smart raps of his cane against the door, before taking the handle and pushing it wide.

Charlie could hardly believe his eyes as he slowly walked into the enormous room. The ceiling above them was high, and there were windows to his right that ran the length of the room. Charlie was not an architect; he wouldn’t know to call the apartment he was in ‘open concept’. What he did know was that it was huge, with a large kitchen, and new-looking furniture, and a real dinner table where, currently, there sat five adults.

“Charlie!” Sarah cried, standing up. Her chair scraped backward and nearly toppled.

“Mom!" Charlie made a few steps towards her, but Sarah was faster, meeting him over the halfway point, and stooping down to hug him tightly against her. Charlie held on, his hands full of her cardigan, an anchor of normalcy he hadn’t realized he’d been missing.

“Oh, Charlie, you’re so cold. Have you eaten?”

“I had some cotton candy in the Chocolate Room, and some flower candy! Then later Mr. Wonka gave me and Grandpa Joe some chocolate from a television!”

“Cotton candy and chocolate isn’t enough, Charlie,” she tsked, pulling back and running her hands over his arms to warm him, fussing with the small threads that had come loose on his sweater. “Why don’t you go sit at the dinner table. We…” her eyes flicked up to Mr. Wonka for the first time, nervous and guarded, then looked back at Charlie. “We don’t have any soup, but we’ll figure something out, okay?”

“Alright, mom. I love you.” Charlie said, leaning in and holding on.

“I love you too, Charlie.” Sarah closed her eyes and held him close again, swaying in the hug.

Left alone by the door, Willy settled his hands on his cane and glanced away with a blink, as if he’d accidentally tried to stare right at the sun. He didn’t at all mind being bypassed, because it gave him welcome breathing space to observe and think. While ostensibly directing his smiling welcome at everybody and nobody in particular, he summed up each of the three other grandparents in one sharp look.

There was Grandma Mk. I, who seemed to be mostly composed of shawls, faded silk flowers, and an ancient bandeau veil, sitting primly upright next to Joe. Then there was Grandma Mk. II, who wasn’t sitting primly upright but was instead chattering away in an excitable manner to Grandpa Mk. II (aka, Grandpa Not-Joe,) who was shushing her and craning his crêpey neck like a tortoise, to try and hear what Sarah and Charlie were saying. Grandma Mk. II had a mane of hair like a dustman’s horse, and something around her shoulders that had three paws and a tail; any further attempt at Linnaean taxonomy would have been tricky, as it was missing its head.

That left the mother, and as she straightened up with her arm around Charlie’s shoulders, Willy swept into a bow.

“Mrs. Bucket, I presume, welcome! It’s an honour, I _do_ apologize for the delay, but I-”

As he looked up, as their eyes met, he realised that he knew her.

She looked different without the heavy military coat and sleet-draggled scarf, but the number of times in his life that anybody had threatened to call his manager on him were few and far between enough to be extremely memorable, and he would have known that delicate face and obdurate chin anywhere.

 _She_ was Charlie’s mother?

She was Charlie’s mother.

His first thought was a fervent thank-you to any and all gods, including the ones that had never been discovered and the ones that didn’t care to be named, that he had been in disguise that night. That the problems of Mr. William Williams, inconvenient peddler of edible fripperies, could stay nicely packed away with him in the box he was kept in. As for the rest, a whole mountain-full of awkward little pieces were suddenly starting to clatter and bounce into place inside his head, and it was all he could do to keep footing and take up his usual position, the one he always seemed to find himself in sooner or later... surfing the landslide.

So, with barely a pause, with only the swiftest hitch in his expression- as if someone had trod glancingly on his foot- he rattled on.

“That is to say. We. _We_ were just taking care of some preliminaries, Charlie and I... I’m sure Joe has filled you in on most of the _tedious_ details-”

“Matter of fact-” began Joe, starting up in his shambling, over-ready way.

“Perfect! It’s a pleasure to have you all here.” He returned Joe’s salute.

Meanwhile, Sarah stood transfixed by the man in front of her. Not because of whom he was, and not because of his reputation, or history, or empire, or _anything_ which might have stopped someone else dead in their tracks. No, Sarah stood still because a horrible realization bloomed in her like an ugly flower.

_She knew him._

As he rambled on, it only took her one look- from his large, inimitable nose to his equally large, curvilinear smile that was all gums and buck teeth, back up to his blue-green eyes which would have looked kind if her memory of them wasn’t so sharp as to remember how he’d looked at her before; the way he’d evaluated her through his frumpy tortoiseshell frames, that were missing now, but that she could envision without any help. Nor did she need any help to remember his summation of her character. That had been plain enough.

And what’s more, he recognized her. She knew he did.

She could have hit him, if that was the kind of person Sarah Bucket was. Instead a hot embarrassment crept over her. His attempt to humiliate her, even nearly a week and a half on, still made her feel ill in the pit of her stomach.

 _So clearly,_ she thought angrily, _it had worked._

Sarah schooled her expression and clenched her teeth. She wouldn’t hash this out in front of Charlie or the others. She could be civil, she could listen, and she could try. For Charlie’s sake if nothing else.

Her face burned with humiliation as she held out her hand.

“It’s nice to meet you, _Mr. Wonka._ I'm Sarah.”

Most people held, that the easiest way to do something you _used_ to know how to do, if it had been a while and you didn’t really remember how to go about it, was to throw yourself at it and hope that muscle memory took over. Willy suspected that this was probably a terrible plan for some things, like skydiving or preparing fugu, but was at least fairly safe for normal social mores. Which was why he didn’t give himself time to think about the fact he hadn’t shaken hands with another adult for over four decades before he found himself doing it.

The handshake went fine, but it was the last thing that did. As he let go, he caught her eye, and the absolute ire and shock in her expression, her flushed cheeks and the way her jaw set like a trap, blew the idea that he was safe behind his little alias right out of the water.

_She knew._

Moments passed and she said nothing, and he realised he’d been granted a reprieve, or at least a stay of execution. He leapt into the conversational gap, determined to stop the whole thing from unravelling any further, for Charlie’s sake. He’d already nearly gotten into a fight with one member of the boy’s immediate family, and he wasn’t proud of it- one was enough for one day.

“Charmed,” he whinnied, with a desperate attempt at a normal smile. Inside, his very accurate memory was scrabbling through the transcript of what he’d said to her that night, what she’d said to him, exactly what had occurred, tossing the most horrible bits of it at him and gibbering. A week and a half too late, he remembered how she’d paid in pennies, how she’d stuck to her guns over that damned coupon as if it was a reasonable hill to die on, how before all of that she’d started to say something about her _son-_

His ears burned, red-hot. Thankfully, Joe, who had captured Charlie in the meantime and hurriedly scrubbed the last of the soot out of the boy’s eyebrows before his mother could spot it, chose that moment to _harrumph_ for his attention.

“And- and this is my Josie,” he said, proudly, taking Grandma Mk. I’s hand.

 _“Josephine,”_ she stressed, with a genteel dip of her head, sending the flowers rustling like ancient paper. “Delighted to meet you, my dear.”

“Madam, the pleasure is all mine,” said Willy, with a bow, and meant it. Any distraction was heaven-sent, in his book. Thank God there were two more grandparents to go; right now, he would have been ecstatic if there’d been fifty.

But the introductions were short-lived, and to his disappointment another grandparent didn’t spring from the closet to buffer the inevitable conversation to follow.

They arranged themselves at the dinner table; Charlie planted between Sarah and Joe, Mr. Wonka at the head of it. It was an awkward, tense affair made no better by the whole conversation being unceremoniously kicked off by Grandpa George.

“Joe says you’re giving Charlie the factory, so what’s the catch?”

_“Dad.”_

George hand-waved Sarah, his magnified eyes warped and wobbled as his glasses slid down his nose.

“Nothing ever comes for free, Sarah,” he declared, his old, thin-pitched voice vibrating like a dried-up music reed. “Nothing at all.”

“But there isn’t a catch!” Charlie eagerly told him. Grandpa Joe nodded along.

_“Charlie.”_

“It’s true, mom!”

“Poppycock!” said George.

“Well, let the man speak, George!” Georgina squawked.

And in unison they all turned their attention to the man at the end of the table and waited.

He was leaning his chin on the tent of his hands, watching Charlie's grandparents as if he found them all every bit as interesting and unorthodox as they found him. He smiled, and Charlie might have been the only one to spot the tiny seed of devilment flaring to life in his eyes.

“No, of course, it’s a reasonable question,” he said. _“Caveat emptor,_ after all...”

_“What’s he say?”_

_“Oh, it means ‘beware of the dog.’”_

“...and I suppose it _is_ rather a large ask to expect you all to simply take my word on it, as you say, nothing gets you nothing, isn’t that right, Mr. Deering? Nothing in the... world.”

“That’s what I said,” snapped George, although he didn’t seem able to summon quite as much asperity, this time. Like most dyed-in-the-wool contrarians, nothing took the wind out of his sails faster than being agreed with.

Willy rose to his feet, collecting his cane out of nowhere and flipping it neatly up to rest against the crook of his neck. “But, it’s getting late, and I know Charlie and Joe would agree that it’s been an _extraordinarily_ long day. Perhaps we could discuss this over dinner? Charlie, a hand, if you would.”

Charlie didn’t need much encouragement, though his small frame protested at the notion of moving seeing as it had finally been let to sit after such a taxing adventure.

He stumbled as he stood and Sarah reached for him, but Joe placed a hand on her shoulder, urging her to let the boy go as he scooted out the door after his hero and mentor.

What greeted Charlie in the hall were two trolleys, both draped in white linen with an assortment of trays and lids on top. It was like something out of a movie, Charlie thought, and in a daze he followed Mr. Wonka’s lead in wheeling the whole assortment back into the rooms and up to the dinner table.

Mr. Wonka gave a wave and a flourish of his hand and plucked the lid off of a particularly large platter, revealing beneath it the most mouth-watering turkey Charlie had ever seen in his life.

“Ladies and Gentlemen,” Wonka declared, "dinner is served."

And it was- a dinner in every way that Charlie had only ever dreamed of. As more of the lids were removed there sprang a whole world of choices. There was French onion soup, baked potatoes, a number of salads and gravies, mashed butternut squash, and so many things Charlie couldn’t even begin to identify, but all of it glistened in the light like edible jewels set in silver. The smell nearly overwhelmed him.

Sarah watched him, silent. Her eyes felt moist, and she raised her hand to try to wick away the wet, self-conscious that a meal could move her to tears. She hadn’t meant to catch his eye, but when she did on accident meet Mr. Wonka’s gaze, the best she could give the man was a watery smile before turning her head away to blot her eyes against the sleeve of her cardigan. She had wanted to say ‘thank you’ but it got caught in her throat, hot and painful as she strained for normalcy. Whatever thankfulness he gleaned from her, Sarah hoped he knew she meant it... but that he’d never know exactly how much.

The mood lifted, from that point on. This was mostly due to the four grandparents, or at least the three more sociable grandparents with the occasional grudging hand from George, and the simple effect of good food on the human spirit. Willy wouldn’t have dared to call himself a chocolatier if he’d failed to predict the latter, but the help from the others was a nice surprise. At least, it made it easier steer the conversation away from sticky territory.

As everyone ate, Joe, given half an inch of leeway, launched enthusiastically into telling him all about what the factory had been like in the old days. He was a fantastic if somewhat meandering raconteur, and Willy would happily have listened right through the meal- and might even have managed to work out from context exactly which ‘old days’ Joe thought he was referring to- but for the fact that the rest of the family had obviously heard it all before. _They_ wanted to know what had happened today, what Charlie and Joe had been up to, what they’d seen in this mysterious place… which, Willy reminded himself, really was still just as mysterious to the four stay-at-home Buckets as it was to the rest of the world. They couldn’t have seen much of it, hustled in so quickly and clandestinely, to avoid the throngs of reporters still waiting at the gates.

Josephine danced mincingly around questions but never left them alone until she was satisfied, Georgina was direct as a hatchet but easily-distracted. George tended to come in at the last minute when the topic had been worried to death and set everything all off again. As the meal went on, Willy found himself intervening more and more, just to give Charlie and Joe a rest. Especially Charlie, who was trying so hard to answer everyone’s questions, eat, and not talk with his mouth full, all at once, that Willy found himself watching the kid as if Charlie was some sort of nail-biting endurance sport. Enough was enough.

And so he picked up the slack, and through the main course he did the thing he was- arguably, sometimes- best at. He was _interesting._ A winning, charming, thoroughly entertaining chameleon, adapting his fancy conversational footwork to whatever they threw his way, and hotfooting it wherever possible to avoid the worrying, quiet, and dangerous waters of Sarah Bucket, almost directly opposite.

“Mr. Wonka, can you pass those orange mashed potatoes?” Charlie was making good use of the opportunity to finally be quiet and eat. “They’re amazing!”

“I believe the kick comes from a little fresh-grated ginger,” said Willy, handing the tureen across. “That one’s Paloma’s speciality- I’ll tell her you said so, Charlie.”

Mr. Wonka had a wonderful way with words, Sarah thought. He could spring and bounce from one topic to the next, he could wrap up an audience and then send them spinning any way he chose. He was smooth, and deft, and altogether enjoying all of it a bit too much. But, the way he spoke to Charlie was so kind and sincere that it crashed hard up against the frustrating memory she had of him holding up his hand to bat her away like a miserable fly as he punched the coupon into his till and then set about counting out her change with a mean, deliberate precision.

Sarah believed with a very strong conviction that a man who set up shop in the poorest part of town and then went about scolding people for trying to save what money they could wasn’t in the business of being generous. She _knew_ the coupon had been a stretch, but she had hoped for some leniency in a world that had so far afforded her very little of it. But if the world wasn’t willing to do business with her, she had also come prepared to kick its teeth in (though it was frightening to have to try).

As she watched him, all charm and twisty wordplay, she wondered, vaguely, if he had quibbled with other customers- poor mothers and fathers or, worse, their children- and made a fuss over a profit margin while in reality he sat on more money than any of them could even dream of. She remembered his shoes, of all things. He put his feet in a pair of oxfords that cost more than every meal, every book, every pair of pants and pair of socks all combined that her family collectively had ever had. And it wouldn’t bother her at all normally except for the horrible way he had looked at her and said ‘Over a _dollar?’_ as if a dollar were a trifle and she was contemptible for thinking otherwise.

“Mr. Wonka,” Sarah said at last, and the room quieted as everyone’s attention shifted onto her. Sarah could never contain her irritation entirely, but she strove for her best as she said, “all of this is very… nice. For you to have shared a meal with us, I mean. And we’re all very grateful, but you still haven’t explained about the factory and what you expect of Charlie or of us, for that matter. It’s getting late. You… urged us out of our house, and had us brought here. I have a shift in three hours that I can’t miss because if I do Mrs. Walinski will be hanging _me_ out to dry and in the meantime I have to help everyone back to the house. And Charlie has school tomorrow. Please, I don’t mean to be impolite or seem ungrateful, but _some_ kind of clarity would be helpful.”

Well, it had only ever been a _stay_ of execution.

Willy put down his fork and made himself look at Charlie’s mother. She hadn’t eaten very much, and she was worrying one wrist in the other hand, turning the sleeve of her patched cardigan back and forth impatiently as she waited for him to answer. Probably, she wasn’t aware she was doing it. People generally fidgeted when they had too much physical energy and nothing to expend it on, or too many thoughts and no outlet. She looked as if she had both, and everything about her was thin and threadbare as if she’d worn and fretted herself down to the bone.

“Then I’ll be clear,” he said. “The factory belongs to Charlie, but-”

“Aha!” barked George, or would have done, if the piece of asparagus he’d been about to swallow hadn’t gotten in the way. Willy paused, and waited politely for the coughing and back-slapping to stop.

“But, since Charlie is eleven, and can hardly be expected to know how to run a chocolate factory- or a global brand, for that matter- right off the bat, I’m here to help him learn.” He glanced at Charlie, with a conspiratorial grin. “Rome wasn’t built in a day, and Romulus didn’t even have homework to contend with.”

“Very true,” agreed Josephine, the classicist, over George's irritated spluttering.

For all that he’d started out meaning to tackle Sarah Bucket head on, it was just so much easier for Willy to fall back into addressing all of them, and to slide naturally from there into mainly speaking to the four older people, yet again.

“So… now you know where I stand. And there’s no caveats, no catches, no blue chambers, although I _would_ recommend not bursting in on Milo’s LARP group on Thursdays if you can help it, at least not without warning, I’d hate for someone to lose an eye. How else can I put it? These apartments are yours, if you like. And you’re not guests, ladies and gentlemen. You’re Charlie’s family, and this is Charlie’s factory.” He raised his eyebrows and spread his hands, so much as to say, _what more needs to be said?_

He didn’t say, _This is your home._ He wanted to, the words were there, and if it had just been Charlie he would have said them, but unlike most of the words that ever occurred to him this particular little group wouldn’t budge, sat on his tongue and refused to make their way out into the world. With Charlie’s mother lurking in his peripheral vision like a thunderhead, he couldn’t exactly blame them.

During this conversation, Charlie watched his mother’s face and knew something was wrong. Charlie was good at that sort of thing. He was a like a divination rod for human emotion, and currently his rods had crossed right over Sarah Bucket and everything he was reading spoke of troubled waters.

“It’s alright, mom,” Charlie said, and he leaned forward. “I… really want to live here. But I also really want you to be happy too. And I told Mr. Wonka I would be happy with a gobstopper instead of the factory. And I still would be, you know.”

The entire table was silent, and Sarah felt a deep and horrible thing twist inside of her that said very plainly ‘you are a bad mother.’ _How_ could she possibly deny her son this? A home without a hole in the roof and the opportunity to do something he was passionately interested in, something that would absolutely give him some kind of future. Her own hands were perpetually dry, knuckles cracking from hours of hot water and back-breaking labor spent only in the pursuit and hope of a warm meal and maybe, _maybe,_ something extra. How could she possibly deny any of them a warm and comfortable place to sleep after years upon years of nothing but cramp and cold? Even if, in her heart of hearts, she wasn’t sure that any of it could last.

Sarah pushed away from the table and took Charlie’s arms in her own.

“Charlie, this isn’t about me, this is about _you_ and this… it’s everything you’ve ever wanted. I would never, ever take this from you. This place is… it’s perfect. It’s more than anything I ever could have dreamed of for you.” _More than anything I could have ever given you,_ she didn’t say. And to try to lighten the mood, she smiled and added: “But I guess I’ll have to get used to you playing _Willy Wonka_ more often, won’t I?”

“Mom!” Charlie went red from head to toe, horribly embarrassed in front of his hero. Sarah laughed and pulled him in for another hug.

"Hear, hear!" Joe cried out.

"It's going to be wonderful!" Georgina shouted.

"It _is_ very lovely." Josephine remarked.

George didn't say anything, but he was nodding along well enough that it couldn't be disputed he was in agreement.

But even though Sarah meant all of what she said, there was still a part of her that felt like it had been cornered in. That she’d never really had a choice, and something about that left her bereft and adrift, so much so that even as she hugged her son, she felt as if she’d just lost something very important.

Willy couldn’t prevent a smile at the mention of Charlie’s pet subject, just as he hadn’t been able to prevent it any other time that the boy had kicked off on the topic- as he’d done so often, in the shop. The bizarre situation of this small, eager advocate praising him to the skies with absolutely no idea of the truth had always left him feeling flattered, amused, and totally blindsided all at once.

He managed to hide his expression by offering Grandma Georgina a slice of cheesecake. With Sarah Bucket apparently defused for the moment, all he could think as the family settled in to enjoy dessert was _thank God, that’s settled._

Except it wasn’t, was it? Not really. Willy was no fool- as much as he enjoyed playing one- and he knew how to read people well enough to see plainly when a problem was solved and when it was just… shelved. And shelving problems, as he knew only too well, just made them more likely to tumble onto your head when you least expected it.

And although he was frustrated by the obstacle, he didn’t blame Sarah for it, not one bit. On the contrary, he’d heard everything she’d said to Charlie, and that night in the candy shop, that nasty, twisted-up inkblot of a memory, only looked uglier and uglier to him with every word. He could weigh and measure it a dozen different ways, he could look over it with a fine lens and tell himself all sorts of extenuating facts, lots of _only reasonables_ and _couldn’t have knowns,_ but the truth was horribly simple. On his own ground, and with every opportunity not to be, he’d been deliberately, damnably, rude, unfair, and unkind.

With some difficulty, he managed to reel his attention back in from a thousand yards beyond his plate just in time to recognise that Joe had just asked him a question.

“I’m so sorry, can you repeat that?” he said. “I’m a little deaf in my left ear.”

“I said,” said Joe, with a helpful hike in volume that made Josephine wince, “the old place seems a lot bigger than I remember. It feels like we hardly saw half of it.”

“Half? My dear Joe, we barely covered a fraction today. And we didn’t get nearly as far as I’d hoped. This factory is a sterling example of modern Antarchitecture-”

“Antarcti- what?”

“It’s like an iceberg,” Willy sketched a shape in the air with his fork. “All you see on the surface is the tiniest tip of the structure. All the most important rooms are deep down below the surface... at least, I think that’s where they ended up. There wouldn’t be nearly enough room on top, you see, with the town in the way and everything, but underneath the ground, I’ve got all the space I want. There’s no limit- you just have to hollow it out.”

“You can’t be serious,” Sarah said. Now that the shape of her new life had been partially shown to her, Sarah, despite her brave face, was beginning to lose patience. She wanted to be anywhere now but at this table, sitting near this man, listening to this conversation. Preferably somewhere she could lie down and have a good cry about it all. She hadn’t had the luxury of a good cry in years, and yet somehow she felt like she needed it now more than ever.

The problem wasn’t that Mr. Wonka told fantastical stories. Joe told tall stories all the time. She didn’t mind them as much as she pretended to because Joe’s stories always had a reason. They were told for the express purpose of inspiring and encouraging their audience, even if they were sometimes a little misguided. Mr. Wonka, however, read as two-faced. He seemed to tell half-truths and lies more for his own entertainment than for the benefit of the listener. It set her teeth decidedly on edge.

Sarah had a hazy memory of reading about a city digging a subway system and how they had taken all the dirt and poured it into the river and it was enough to make an island. When Mr. Wonka opened his mouth she cut him off.

“Where would you put all the earth you dug up? And even if you did find some place for it, you can’t just hollow out underneath a _town._ There are permits and bylaws. You have to do soil tests. You would need materials for construction, and I’m pretty sure someone would notice the noise.”

She really didn’t get it, and how could he hope to translate? It was like trying to describe music, crude words alone couldn’t even begin to explain the shape of a tune, especially to someone so deaf to it, so numb to even the vibration of it in the air. Willy still remembered all-too-clearly the sinking feeling he’d felt when, just that morning, a thirteen-year-old boy who should have understood as easily as he breathed had looked him right in the eyes and asked, _Imagination? What’s that?_

Where did you even begin? So much easier to just not try to explain, to say something like _Anyone can ask questions, it’s the answers that matter,_ or _Who knows the way out of a rose?_ and dash off down another path while people were still trying to work out exactly how (or if) your answer applied to what they’d asked. A verbal smoke-bomb, with the advantage over a real one that you didn’t actually have to sprint out of the room.

He had a very distinct impression that if he said something like that to Sarah Bucket right now, however, sprinting out of the room would be his only chance of staying in one piece afterwards.

“Well, you’ll have to forgive me, I never keep up with the news,” he said. _“Did_ anyone notice?” He looked inquiringly around the table. “Anybody? Charlie, you’re the local history buff, do you recall anything about mysterious noises... half the town suddenly falling into giant holes in the ground… no?”

He parked his chin on his hand. “Odd, you’d really think the _Daily Times_ would pick up on something like that, wouldn’t you?”

Sarah’s mouth compressed into a thin, tight line, and she didn’t say much of anything after that.  
  
As the meal finished, she took to what she was best at. Without another glance at Mr. Wonka, Sarah stood and began clearing plates, and finding rooms. She took control of the chaos and organized it with a militaristic efficiency and a gentle hand, in her element for the first time this evening.  
  
Charlie watched his mom, and then turned his face up to look at Mr. Wonka, who was observing the whole affair with a blank expression. He wondered if Mr. Wonka was also tired; if the day had taken a lot more out of him than he had been letting on. Charlie reached over and tugged on his sleeve.  
  
“Mr. Wonka? I have a scrapbook I’d love to show you, if you feel like it, I mean. But, I don’t know where it is. Is the stuff from our house here too?”

Charlie was looking better, at least, Willy thought. He’d gotten some colour back, his small face infused with a new eager energy.

“I don’t think so, Charlie. The Loompas are logistical wizards, they had no problem transporting everyone here at such short notice, but we thought it would be best to sort out the impedimenta sometime when it would be a bit less impediment… _ing.”_

He looked up. Joe was standing at one of the tall, arching windows, shading the glass with a hand to better see out into the night, speaking to Josephine in a low voice. He was describing to her the crowd of reporters and news crews still camped out far below, the lights and tiny human shapes and the occasional camera flash in the shadows around the gates. Josephine was drowsing, propped up in a perfect nest of sofa cushions, occasionally giving his hand a sleepy, encouraging press whenever he stopped and waited for a response.

Sarah was nowhere to be seen, still helping her parents get settled in to one of the palatial bedrooms that led off from the far end of the vast main room. Willy perked up, sat up, and reached for his hat.

“Well, there’s no present like time. Let’s go fetch it, what do you say?”


	2. Chapter 2

A happy jolt bounced around Charlie’s little body like lightening. His excitement was palpable and he nearly started gasping like he had that first day in the small candy shop when he had chanced to glimpse a Whipple Scrumptious Fudgemallow Delight.

“Yeah!” he enthused, getting to his feet in a scramble. "I’ve never had anyone over before!”

He took Mr. Wonka’s hand, a habit he was quickly developing, and happily went with him to the front door, nearly pulling the man across the room. He glanced back for a moment at the apartment, before looking up at Mr. Wonka.

“One sec,” he said and with more energy than he had shown most of the day, Charlie practically ran over to Joe who he shared a small conversation with and kissed on the cheek before running back.

“I just told Grandpa Joe I was going with you for a while. I don’t want Mom to be upset if she can’t find me. She… I don’t think Mom is feeling well. Oh!” he blurted suddenly. “Maybe we could get her mirror while we’re there? That would cheer her up!”

“Stranger things have happened,” said Willy, as he let him tow him back out into the hallway, along the half-acre of soft blue carpet to the elevator. Privately, he suspected it would take something a little more drastic, but he didn’t want to worry Charlie, or hint that there was anything more askew between the two of them than there probably already seemed.

He pressed the call-button and leaned on his cane, keeping an eye on the brassy half-moon gauge over the door. The elevator soon _dinged_ and he stepped forwards, pulling the grate aside, ushering Charlie across the threshold before he followed.

“What does the shoe mean, Mr. Wonka?” asked Charlie, gazing up at the row of numbers and symbols as the elevator started to descend.

“Shipping, of course,” said Willy, with his hand on the control lever, as the car picked up the pace. “Matter of fact, that’s where we’re going.”

“Shipping?”

“Yes, Picking, Packing, Stamping and Shipping. It’s where we assemble all the orders, get ‘em all packed up and ready to go, and then we just- shoe them out the door.” He made an expeditious little flurrying motion with his free hand, and brought the elevator to a neat stop.

The cumbersome doors rattled open on a quiet dark passageway, with very peculiar walls. They seemed to be made from loose bricks of all different sizes, slotted together like a giant Tetris puzzle, all with a flat pale-brown cardboardy texture… and then the one hallway opened up into another and another and the whole picture became clear, that the ‘hallways’ were just long streets and avenues between a vast grid of stacked boxes, sealed and printed and numbered, the whole place big enough to lose fifty Arks of the Covenant in as easy as turning around. It was cool and echoey and a little drafty, lit by big globe-lights that marched in rows far overhead like a whole series of impossible planetary conjunctions. Although it still very much felt like it belonged to the factory, there was a strange half-and-half sense in the air, a borderline suggestion that here, of all places, the real world wasn’t that far away.

“If you ever get lost in here, Charlie,” Willy advised, glancing back, “just look for the colours at the end of the rows. Hotter is closer to the elevator- colder is closer to the outside.”

He led Charlie around a twenty-foot-tall pyramid of Fudgemallow boxes, nipped up a little side-turning, and arrived without warning at a small, unlabelled door.

“After you…” He set his cane against the door, pushing it open a very little way. A thin night breeze crept through, fresh and cold. “I won’t be a moment.”

Charlie stepped out of the door and startled. The door that he had just stepped from had been metallic, old, with a curved top and a heavy no-nonsense handle, and a large yellow and black sticker that read: CAUTION: IF DOOR DOES NOT OPEN DO NOT ENTER. However, more importantly, it had been very firmly part of the factory. He knew this because he had just been _in_ the factory, and yet Charlie Bucket now found himself on the step of a little store front on a winding side street that tilted upward; the large ‘W’ shape of the factory clearly visible at the end of it, over the rooftops in the distance.

Charlie spun around. Mr. Wonka was gone, the door behind him was average sized, square and wooden, with a window inset into it that said in very unfussy letters ‘Bottom’s Rest.’

Charlie curved his hand and leaned in to look beyond the glass. An old man was drinking inside and another, younger man, was wiping down its counter. There were no boxes, or globe lights, and neither man looked as if a boy had just appeared out of thin air.

Charlie launched himself off the step and spun around, walking backwards and away from the pub, as if seeing it from a wider angle might help him make some kind of sense of it.

The same no-nonsense writing on the door was further up, and the pub itself was only two stories high, the top of it made up of occupied apartments. A window above was cracked open and the sound of a television carried down from it.

Charlie waited. He looked up and down the street. A minute passed by, then another. He rubbed his hands together to abate the cold as a sense of concern knotted itself in the pit of his stomach.

But then the door opened, not enough to catch any glimpse beyond it, and a man he hadn’t been expecting to see, stepped out- a tall man, with long hair, thinning at the top, and with a familiar white shop coat over an even more familiar fair-isle knit vest. The man swivelled a bit, looked up and down the street, and then placed a dowdy, dated pair of spectacles on his face.

“Ah, there you are, Bucket! Thought I might have lost you for a second. Follow me!”

“Wait!” Charlie cried. He ran forward and gestured at the man in front of him to stop. Charlie looked him up and down. “I _knew_ it was you! I thought I must be wrong this morning because you didn’t say anything and I- I just thought maybe I was confused? But, I _knew_ it was you. But-” Charlie stopped, his hands went down. His excitement at the revelation- that he had been right about the identity of the prickly grouch who ran the sweets shop at the end of his street- seemed to dim a little as he looked up at Mr. Wonka with genuine confusion.

Charlie didn’t have many friends, and none of them were really his own age. He gravitated towards adults, and Mr. Williams had been no exception. Although he hadn’t always seemed to be the nicest, Charlie liked to assume the best of people, and the fact that Mr. Williams had let him sit in his shop, had invited him to watch TV with him, and had let him go on about his niche special interest _ad nauseam_ without ever telling him to leave, had made Mr. Williams, in some strange way, _feel_ like a friend.

 _“Why_ was it you? Why did you open up a shop in the first place and… and why didn’t you say anything?”

“Say anything when? This morning? You really think the- the social media guru and the business magnate would’ve taken it lying down if they’d found out I’d been in contact with any of the other winners before today? No, they’d've cried foul and started demanding compensation, and I did rather want the tour to at least get further than Reception. And as for the shop, well...”

It wasn’t exactly comfortable for Willy, to be back in the shopkeeper’s sensible shoes. The day-and the evening so far- had done their part to alter his views on a number of things, not least how fun it had been to be out in the world, finally dealing out a little bit of harmless payback. To create a disguise, he’d meant to hold up a mirror to the town, to the world in general, and he’d taken a peek and found Mr. William Williams squinting back at him. He’d congratulated himself on the accuracy of the portrait he’d drawn, a character so jaded and close-fisted that he barely bothered to see a thing past the buttons of his cash register, and it was only just beginning to occur to him that when you look into a mirror, no matter your reason, a lot of what you see will simply be, well, _you._

He tucked his hands into his trouser pockets, hitching the loose material of his coat out of the way, and looked thoughtfully down at Charlie. Although his clothes belonged to his alter-ego, his expression was very much his own. It wasn’t a look Mr. Williams would have given anybody. In the month they’d known each other, Charlie had seen him deal out a whole pack of different sorts of looks, but none had been so open, forthright, or tinged with something so near to regret.

“I wasn’t ready to deal with the world on its own terms, Charlie. I wanted to know what it thought of me, after all those years… and call it pride, but I didn’t want it to know that _I_ was asking. And… I knew _who_ I was looking for, but I didn’t know where they might possibly be, or how to set about finding them.”

He stepped from the shallow stone kerb outside the impossible pub, and cocked his head in a mute invitation for Charlie to follow as he set off, walking down the hilly little street.

“So I did what I always do. I put myself in the right place, and I waited for an idea to arrive. And what came along? Well, what do you think? Whoever might have lent me the notion that there were people out there who would, _ahem,_ ‘give anything to see inside that factory?’”

Charlie’s eyes went wide.  
  
“You mean… this whole competition happened because of me? Because of what I said?” This would have been a lot for anyone to take in, but it was gargantuan for an eleven year old. Charlie clutched his head. He didn’t know why Mr. Wonka would listen to Charlie Bucket, of all people, but then he remembered the first time he met Mr. William Williams, and how he had practically exploded at him with every bit of Wonka trivia he knew. He went red on the spot.  
  
And then a sudden realization hit him, and Charlie spun around, walking backwards to talk to him.  
  
“You left that dollar in the shop on purpose! You made sure I found a ticket! My mom had said that I wouldn’t be able to get a Wonka bar this year because… but then Grandpa Joe said he had some money saved up, and mom surprised me on my birthday with it, but, well, you know I didn’t win. That’s why I was away for so many days. I didn’t want to even look at a Wonka bar knowing I couldn’t have another chance. But how did you know I would buy a chocolate bar with that dollar? And how did you know Miss Green would give me the right one?”  
  
Mr. Wonka reached out and caught Charlie before he could back over a fire hydrant, and turned his shoulders so that the boy was walking face forward. They rounded a corner and came upon the sweets shop, hollow and cold looking with its empty windows and lights off in the night.

“How did you know I’d get your letter?”

Willy raised a hand to the window, shading the glass to see in. Only for a moment, a glance into the dark and deserted interior, but it sparked a memory; of standing within, looking out, tired and frustrated, as a cold wind whipped down the street, rattling the windowpanes and setting the door trembling in its frame. The night before last. Gazing through the glass, not at anything real but at the dispiriting facts stacking up around him- the enormous success of his contest, the ticking clock, the day of the tour almost upon him, and the four winners…

The four winners. Four charming, enterprising, ebullient, gifted children. Give his factory to one of them or stick his head in an industrial toffee slicer, he honestly wasn’t sure which seemed like the more attractive prospect.

And then, within a moment of turning away, he’d caught a flapping glimpse of white. Something had whirled out of the night and pasted itself across the glass, almost right in front of his eyes, pinned there by the wind. A paper plane, of all things, crumpled and fluttering, and he’d had just enough time to spy a bit of pencilled scrawl disappearing into the fold-

_ie Bucke_

And then the wind had snatched it away, a ghostly-pale shred tossed along the street, and without a second thought he’d wrenched the door open and flung himself out after it, chasing it headlong into the night.

“Not the most reliable method of delivery,” he said, with a wry smile, turning back to the here and now and Charlie, waiting for him. “But it worked, didn’t it?”

Charlie knew, intellectually, that the universe worked logically and that it really wasn’t any use to try to prove otherwise. But there is a difference between knowing something and believing in something, and though Charlie hadn’t had much of a reason to think the universe should be benevolent- that a paper plane, sent with a kiss and a wish, really could land in the hands of the person it was intended for- it hadn’t stopped his heart from believing it could be true.

“Where is fancy bred? In the heart or in the head?” Charlie thought out loud as they resumed down the short street, the gutters sagging into the pavement deeper as they went.

“Except in this case I suppose it’s a _flight_ of fancy. Huh, you really do pay attention.”

Charlie shrugged and then caught sight of his old home. With a good meal in him, Charlie felt a bright burst of energy and he trotted ahead, a spring in his step as he pointed out the house to Mr. Wonka.

“It’s this one! Right here!”

The Bucket house cut a sad, shabby shape even in the dark. Scrap metal pieces were desperately hammered over what little remained of the original wooden structure and it sagged between the two buildings either side of it, as if it had fallen over for a rest and never quite managed to get back up. But its peaky angled roof and little, kinked smoke stack stretched upwards with the optimism of a dandelion.

Charlie dashed by the crooked laundry pole where Grandma Georgina’s socks were still billowing on the line, and he rummaged in his pocket for his key. The door didn’t have a proper lock, but someone had made do by screwing in a little hinged arm and placing an old padlock through it.

“It might take me a second. The lock sticks sometimes.”

Willy stopped mid-step, so suddenly he nearly tripped up the kerb. It was a lucky thing that Charlie was completely absorbed in unlocking the door, because with his first proper look at the Bucket house his expression went veering right across the spectrum and it was a good few seconds before he had the presence of mind to gallop after it, lasso it, and bring it back under his control.

He’d had no idea where the boy lived. In the neighbourhood, on the same street, which curved sharply as it wound its way down the hill from the shop. Close, he’d assumed, from the way Charlie popped up so routinely at school-time and home-time, satchel over his shoulder. Beyond that, why ask? Fortune had parked him exactly where he’d needed to be.

This had been a good neighborhood, four decades ago. Not that it was a bad one now, and not that he’d chosen it for that- or chosen it at all- but during the few half-hearted excursions he’d made over the month, he’d seen how the promise and shine he remembered had faded, and how the further you went down the hill the more obvious it became, how everything had the same worn, aging, hard-bitten look. That was just time. This was… something else.

Charlie’s house looked like it had been put there by mistake, as if a careless giant had shed a pocketful of junk and forgotten to come back for it. There was a large crazed hole in the front window, which was the _only_ window, because while there were a lot of other fairly large openings in the front of the structure none of them looked as if they were there on purpose. The front step was a wooden crate that had, judging by the upside-down print on the sides, once contained rhubarb, but someone had stencilled WELCOME carefully on the tread in faded purple paint. There was a small Christmas tree growing in a cut-down paint can by the step, and as soon as Charlie rattled the lock open with an expert little twist and jiggle of the key, the door swung open by itself, which wasn’t in the least surprising, because the entire front wall was leaning gently out into the street.

Charlie went in, biting his lip at the anticipation of showing Mr. Wonka his scrap book. He wondered what the man would make of his collection of bits and bobs, trinkets and news clippings. He knew they were small things, but it didn’t stop him from being proud of each and every one of them. He hoped Mr. Wonka liked it.

The house was nearly pitch black, aside for a small bit of the street light outside glinting off this or that about the room, and it was cold- the draft had ample opportunity to breeze through. The emptiness of it struck Charlie as strange. He’d never been in the house without a grandparent or two perched up high in the bed overlooking the small place they called home. He tried the light switch, flipping it a couple times with an audible _chunk chunk_ noise. When nothing happened he turned back to Mr. Wonka to reassure him. He couldn’t entirely make the man out in the dark, but a bit of light sparkled from his glasses, and Charlie focused on that as he spoke.

“Watch your step. I just have to get the lights working.” He carefully groped for the candle that was kept on the stairs and ran his hands against the rough wooden floor, cautious not to risk catching a splinter. His fingers bumped against the smooth wax of the stubby candle and then found the matches. A gritty scratch and the hiss of a match, then Charlie carefully lit the candle and wet the extinguished match with his tongue.

He handed the small chamber stick candle over to Mr. Wonka for safekeeping. He seemed startled to take it, a little clumsy as Charlie pressed it firmly into his hands. Then Charlie climbed the stairs, crawled over the bed, and grasped a bicycle wheel that had been affixed to the roof with something that looked like scrap wood, fishing wire, and hope. He spun the wheel as fast as his little arms could work it and slowly the small lights around them sputtered and swelled, glowing brighter and brighter until eventually the generator caught and they came on full, throwing the house into light.

At first, despite the darkness, Willy had tried venturing couple of steps from the door as he pulled it shut behind him, but he’d quickly discovered something fairly substantial and sharp-cornered by walking into it shin-first, and sensibly opted to wait. Which meant, that he was standing pretty much in the dead centre of the floor when the lights fizzed and blinked on, and the whole room came into view around him.

It _was_ just a room, and a small one, at that. It had a little height, which was used almost right up to the patched-tin ceiling, where a sleeper bed on a crazy sort of scaffold had been turned into a sort of stairway-landing with half a painter’s ladder and a wooden trestle. Look at it sideways and it was almost like a second floor, or it had at least been press-ganged into being one. Everything he could see was on its second, third, fourth, who-knew-how-manyth use, every recognizable object repurposed to fit a need.

And _need_ was what Willy saw, everywhere, in a glance, stark need and a desperate, struggling, opposing force that had met that need wherever it possibly could. His sharp eye for detail and innovation didn’t help him, here, dragging his attention around the room and pointing out whether he wanted to see or not how an oil drum had been turned into a furnace, an old dovecote into a water-collector, an upside-down ironing board into a foundation for the sagging mezzanine. The thing he’d walked into was an old armchair with one recognizable leg and three jury-rigged prosthetics. He looked down, and saw that a missing plank in the floor at his feet had been replaced with the top of a bureau, neatly cut and fitted in place, the brass keyhole still in plain sight.

He’d known the Buckets probably weren’t that well-off, although he’d arrived at the understanding by a kind of unthinking osmosis, vaguely taking in the boy’s shabby clothes (but maybe he just liked them) his refusal to buy candy (frustrating, but some kids didn’t get an allowance) and his startling pronouncement, just that morning, that they didn’t have electricity at home. Willy had been thrown by that, as anybody would be, had looked to Joe for confirmation, and the wary, reluctant answering look on the old man’s face certainly hadn’t denied the fact. He’d wondered… but there’d been no time for wondering, today.

This was the first time he’d really stopped and thought about it all, and the moment he did, every last piece of the puzzle clattered into place and the awful thought finally struck him that everything that had perplexed him about Charlie Bucket, everything that had seemed a bit off-kilter or not-quite-right, everything that had given him pause, it all had one horribly simple answer, and it was- _this._

As Charlie hopped down from the bed and clambered back down the makeshift steps, the boy’s lively movement seemed to stir him out of his frozen fugue. Like a dreaming ghost, he slowly lifted a hand, and pinched out the candle.

Charlie was oblivious to whatever Mr. Wonka was thinking; his head was already stuffed under the stairs, looking between the wooden accordions that acted as a support for the landing. A moth eaten scarf, a thinning blanket, a few items hung for safe keeping and, in the shuffle, pushed to the back and forgotten. Right at the bottom, under a few items Sarah had put away for safe keeping, Charlie’s small hands wrapped around his prize and he gently pulled it out from under the stack and tilted it to get it out from between the wood pieces.  
  
The book was big, and beaten. Weather damaged and dirty, like something pulled from the trenches of Ypres rather than from a family home. Charlie hugged it close to himself as he stood and then presented the book to Mr. Wonka by holding it out at arm’s length and wiggling it side to side.  
  
“Here it is! This is my most prized possession. It’s everything Wonka-related I could ever find. Here! I’ll show you.”  
  
Charlie pushed the swivelling desk out of the way of the chair seat and ushered Mr. Wonka into it, pulling back the desk top and placing the book down in front of him.  
  
“The book starts the first time I ever had a Wonka bar. I couldn’t write back then, but my dad wrote the date for me.”  
  
And sure enough, a Wonka Bar wrapper had been carefully taped into the book and a blunt hand had printed, very succinctly ‘Charlie’s First Chocolate Bar, September 25th, 2011’.  
  
It was strange sometimes for Charlie to look at the book and see that writing. It belonged to someone he wasn’t entirely sure he remembered and it was also one of the only things he had left of his father. The thought was melancholic, but brief, and Charlie eagerly pushed forward, pointing out the foil wrappers he hadn’t yet taped in.  
  
“And I got these the first day we met! The foils from the Whipple Scrumptious Fudgemallow Delight! You can still smell the chocolate on them,” Charlie smiled and laughed, “and they make the book smell really good too.”

Even the book itself was a hodge-podge, pasteboard and tough wallpaper for the bindings and five woven electrical ties, in five cheery rainbow colours, holding the punched pages together at the spine.

He turned a few pages back. Charlie had made the most out of a scarce subject, and there were clippings and articles here he couldn’t have collected firsthand, photocopied articles from ten or fifteen or twenty years back, pasted in and labelled in Charlie’s adventurous pencilled hand.

“I found these in the library,” said Charlie, eagerly. “The librarian- Miss Phelps- she’s really nice, she lets me make copies.”

Willy shifted slightly in his seat. A rogue spring high up in the chair-back was poking him between the shoulderblades, as if even the ancient armchair was nudging him knowingly, reminding him of the last month, every damning little detail. He remembered the day he’d opened the shop, how the boy had collected up the discarded wrappers people had left strewn around the shelves, how he’d breathed deeply through the handful of crumpled foils with his eyes closed, like a very small wine connoisseur picking out every note of a fine bouquet. Willy had thought it was pretty comical, then, a scruffy little kid savoring a bunch of sweet wrappers as if he was tasting vintage Madiran in Marciac.

It didn’t seem quite so funny, now.

A different page, a bright red-and-yellow paper wrapper, fragile and protected with tape. “Now, this isn’t a copy,” he said, frankly relieved to find something that felt _safe_ to question. “We haven’t made this style of wrapper since the sixties. Where’d you find it?”

“That’s Grandpa Joe’s! From when he worked at the factory. He said: Charlie!” Charlie raised his finger up, imitating his grandfather. “This is a wrapper from the greatest, most wonderful, most fantastical chocolate bar ever made! It’s a masterpiece of chocolatiering!” He dropped his finger, his eyes wide and sincere. “I hadn’t had one myself until my birthday this year! My mom got me one. And Grandpa Joe was right- it’s amazing! Here, I still have it!” Charlie dashed off to rummage in a small cupboard, and on his way back grabbed something from behind the stairs, placing it on his head.

“Do do-do-doo!” Charlie beamed. “This is the hat I wear when I play Willy Wonka! I didn’t know what your hat looked like, but Grandpa Joe and I taped this together!” Then Charlie held out the chocolate bar which had been devotedly wrapped, with a small piece of tape neatly stuck on to keep the fold down.

“Last year I was able to make my birthday chocolate last six months and I was going to try for a whole year this time… but I really would like to share it with you, Mr. Wonka. The chocolate always tastes better when you share it.”

_I only get one bar a year- always Wonka!_

Of course Willy had _heard_ Charlie say so. Just like he’d heard him say, variously, in wishful longing, mild agitation, and distress, that he couldn’t buy any candy, that he had to wait until his birthday, that he had _one_ chance at a Golden Ticket and that was it. He’d heard all of it, but it hadn’t been a convenient thing to think about, had it? So he’d shuffled it all aside as childish hyperbole, if he’d thought about it at all, and gone right back to being vaguely irritated that the kid refused to show willing and buy a damn Wonka bar already.

 _But, hear me out, what if he actually can’t,_ Perdia had asked him, and he’d said… not much, as far as he remembered, a string of exasperated consonants like _hhhppffpfpfffffft, come on,_ and then he’d changed the subject because…

...because it had made him feel uncomfortable. Because by that point, about a week ago, some part of him, maybe, had suspected she could be right. At least there was that, but God, it wasn’t much.

And then there was the letter, which had said nothing of the tiny house or the cold or the leaking roof but instead offered, unthinkingly, to share. It was becoming glaringly clear that Charlie’s ideas were almost all he had in the world, but he’d offered them with an open hand. As a shy postscript, practically an afterthought, he’d requested a Wonka bar for himself- _if it’s not asking too much-_ and he’d offered to share that, too.

In comparison, if you really wanted to examine the contrast- or if you really didn’t, but you couldn’t stop yourself- Charlie had never had a Fudgemallow bar until his birthday, this year, and he still would never have had one to this day, most likely, if his mother hadn’t successfully stood up to the absolute, unforgivable, Godzilla-sized arse of a candy-shop owner up the street.

It was cold in the tiny house. The weather lately had been much worse than it was tonight, but it was still drafty and chill, barely warmer than the street. Willy never felt extremes of temperature too badly- fairly easy to do when you lived in a climate you yourself controlled to a T- but as Charlie proudly showed off his cardboard topper he was reminded that he’d chucked the kid’s woolly hat gaily into the scenery earlier on, and as for a coat, Charlie had never had one to begin with.

As Charlie returned from his dash across the room and perched himself back up on the armchair next to him, he quietly shucked his arms out of the roomy shop-coat and draped it around Charlie’s thin shoulders like a cape to go with the cereal-box hat, which looked more like a colorful king’s crown than anything else. He took the bar of chocolate held out to him as if it was an equivalent exchange, breaking off a square before passing it back.

“It tastes better when it’s not six months old, too.” To his credit, he managed to say it without his voice breaking. He liked to pride himself on his ability to play a part and sell it with glib success, but he felt as if he’d never needed the knack quite as much as he did right now.

Charlie nodded in agreement, hugging the shop-coat around himself, only half-aware of the chill until it had been assuaged. It smelled like a barber shop, Charlie thought, not that he had ever been in one, but he happened by some on his winding route to and from school, and the smell was distinct. It was clean and floral, spicy-earth and powder.

“I guess so. Last night when I got home I showed everyone the ticket and then, after dinner we shared the chocolate all together. It was magical, Mr. Wonka. I think my mom would really have liked to come on the tour today, but she couldn’t because she had to work. But then Grandpa Joe said he would take me! He hadn’t been out of that bed in- well, you know. That bed up there,” Charlie pointed to the slouching bed near the roof, the blankets pushed aside and left, most likely in the hurry to get up to the factory. “I don’t remember the last time any of them were out of bed. I think having a big dinner helped too. It helped them feel better, and I think-” Charlie’s expression faltered and he pulled the shop-coat around himself, fiddled with the fabric, seeming to find the pattern suddenly interesting.

The words in his mouth felt dangerous, somehow. Wrong and inexpressible, like something most people wouldn’t want to hear, but somehow with Mr. Wonka that felt okay, like he _could_ tell Mr. Wonka something hard.

“I don’t think Mom eats very much,” he said quietly. “She never says anything, but...” Charlie didn’t mean to cry, he really didn’t. Not here with Mr. Wonka in front of him and his dreams having come true. But a tear slipped out anyway, and he brushed it away, putting a brave face on and turning his attention back to the book. “I’m sorry, Mr. Wonka. I don’t usually talk to anyone about that stuff.”

“Charlie, I’d hope that you could talk to me about anything.” Willy let the book rest for a moment, speaking seriously. Moments like this, when he slowed and quietened down and stopped hopping about both verbally and physically were so rare that it would have been impressive enough just by contrast, but his guilt and the way he felt lent him an extra gravity, a warmth and sense of solidarity that he couldn’t help. It was in his voice, the way he touched the boy’s shoulder, an echo of the way Charlie had reached to comfort him earlier, in the Elevator. Though he’d told himself he had every reason to be happy, though everything had worked out better than he’d even dreamed it might, he’d been the one who’d needed it, then.

“We don’t know each other too well, yet, but… most said, soonest mended, don’t you think?” He was quiet for a moment, then brightened and tapped the chocolate bar in Charlie’s hand, resolved to steering the mood upwards, for both their sakes.

“Hey. Are you going to eat any of that, or were you just planning on sniffing it?”

It was some kind of relief for Charlie to be able to say something like that, and a sort of miracle to have someone to listen.

Charlie swiped at his eyes and smiled, before breaking off more of the bar and handing it to Mr. Wonka.

They both turned their attention back to the book. Mr. Wonka asked questions and Charlie recounted everything he could remember about each scrap that had been lovingly saved and pressed between the pages of his book. A few of the items even made Mr. Wonka laugh with surprise and then run off on a story which Charlie listened to with rapt, eager attention.

But the evening wore on and eventually the generator puttered out. The lights weakened.

“The battery can’t hold a charge very well anymore,” Charlie explained.

“Well, Charlie, perhaps it’s the universe giving us a sign. You ready to go?”

Charlie looked around him- at the empty bed near the ceiling, the unplumbed tub and the broken window. He looked at the pokey corners and uneven steps- at the one place in the whole world where he had always felt safe and loved. And he thought of all the nights he had spent looking at the lines on the corrugated metal of his roof and the stars he sometimes saw from between them. And he looked at Mr. Wonka.

“Yeah,” he said. “I think so.”


	3. Chapter 3

During the walk back to the factory, Charlie kept up a flow of energetic chatter, ranging from one topic to the next. He had wedged his scrapbook into his satchel, along with his schoolbooks and some other things he thought the others might need immediately, and it swung from his shoulder as he hopped on and off the kerb, walking straighter sections as if the worn stones were an imaginary tightrope, strung between the old home and the new.

He was telling Mr. Wonka about a trip his class had taken to another factory, a bottled soda factory several towns over. How it had been nothing like the chocolate factory, of course, nowhere _near_ as amazing, but how there had still been fascinating things, like the real mineral spring they drew their water from, drilled deep into the bedrock, and the huge spotless grey room they’d seen through a special viewing window, full of noise and motion, where carousels and conveyors of machines filled, capped and labelled bottles faster than the eye could follow.

Willy was quiet. He was listening, with the sort of dislocated attention that could probably have handled a test later on the subject, but his mind wandered like Charlie’s train of conversation, and the places it took him were far less pleasant. He was thinking about Charlie’s energy right now compared to Charlie’s energy over the last few weeks. He was thinking about the first day it had snowed, how he’d glanced through the window around the usual time and spotted Charlie in the street on his way to school as a small horde of other children raced past, yelling and laughing and throwing snowballs. He was thinking about how Charlie had waved but shaken his head when they’d tried to drag him into the game, even ignoring a friendly snowball straight to the woolly hat, and kept on walking quietly, ploddingly, up the street.

He was thinking about how he’d turned away, annoyed and disappointed, asking himself what kind of mopey, no-fun ten-year-old turned down a snowball fight.

Well, now he knew, didn’t he? Charlie had leapt up, partway through their exploration of his scrapbook, remembering that the newspaper article that had started all this, the edition that had announced the Golden Ticket competition, hadn’t yet been pasted into his book. He’d read it so often, he’d explained, that it hadn’t made sense to put it away, and he’d kept it in the drawer of his desk, but it wasn’t there now. The two of them had combed through the tiny room, and while Charlie had found his newspaper article, folded up and neatly put away with his schoolbooks, Willy had found… a lot more food for thought.

What kind of mopey, no-fun ten-year-old turns down a snowball fight? The kind of mopey, no-fun ten-year-old who goes through winter days on nothing more than a bowl of soup that is basically water, chopped-up cabbage, and a few grains from a vegetable stock-cube, the latter essentially homeopathic. The kind who sleeps in a chair, taking turns with their mother because their grandparents barely fit the one bed, the kind to whom half a root vegetable is a week’s worth of food and a single chocolate bar is an almost inconceivable prize in itself.

The kind who grows an affection for a local shop because it’s warm and to some degree magical and the opposite, environmentally speaking, of the reality of his freezing, comfortless home, and keeps visiting through the winter days so that the enlightened and reasonable purveyor of said shop can make clever remarks and eat candy right in front of his face.

When you’ve come to treat everything like a test, thought Willy, with one eye on Charlie as the boy stopped to size up the very normal and uninteresting front of the Bottom’s Rest pub, you have no right to cry when the universe decides to grade you itself.

“How does the door open? The one to the factory.” Charlie looked over the façade and traced the lines of the entrance as if he might see the factory through them, some glimpse of the cardboard maze and the globe lighting, the impossible room beyond the ordinary door.

“Hmmm, good question.” Willy arched an eyebrow, licked his finger and held it up. He hummed, hands on his hips, then counted three panels of the door left and two down, then knocked twice. He looked back at Charlie over his shoulder with a smile, and opened the door.

“Come along, Charlie. No time to dawdle,” he said, breezily, and Charlie trotted forward, following him in.

Instead of the warehouse Charlie was expecting, they found themselves in the hallway outside of the apartments that Charlie’s family now called home.

“But- but… how did we end up here?”

Mr. Wonka checked his pocket watch before he tucked it neatly back into place.

“A sign that things are getting late.”

“What?”

“All in due time, Charlie, but to put it simply, we are here because we haven’t the time to not be here.”

“Do you mean… there’s something you need to do?”

“Precisely that. I need to speak with your mother… I just didn’t think it would need to be so soon.”

“She’s probably getting ready for work.”

Willy sighed and looked at the ceiling.

“Most said, soonest mended, huh? Suppose you would catch me on that too,” he muttered.

“Mr. Wonka?”

“Nothing to worry about, Charlie. Let’s get you off to bed.”

Willy knocked politely on the door, and gently opened it to find the room cleared except for Joe who glanced over from the couch. The old man had clearly been waiting up for them. He eagerly got to his feet and greeted them with a salute.

“You didn’t have to wait for us, Grandpa,” said Charlie, meeting Joe with a hug as he unshouldered his satchel and propped it on an empty chair. “You’ve got to be tired-”

“Tired? No, no, not a chance, I’m wide awake,” insisted his grandfather, glancing up as Willy returned his salute. In truth, Joe was starting to think he must be much more tired than he’d thought, because for a moment there he could have sworn the man walking into the room with Charlie wasn’t Mr. Wonka at all- he’d had a confused impression of a mousy-looking sort of fellow, an assistant or clerk perhaps- but a blink and a second look and of _course_ it was Mr. Wonka, exactly as he’d been on the tour, from his top hat and tails right down to his spatted shoes.

“Besides,” he told his grandson, “I promised your mother I’d see you safely off to bed. Wait ‘til you see your new room,” he added, gleefully, dropping his voice. “It’s the size of a football field.”

“Really?”

“Well…” Joe gave a vague, back-and-forth dither of his hand. “More or less. Come on, now, come and take a look!”

“Goodnight, Mr. Wonka- oh!” Charlie’s eyes widened, and he tapped his nose, urgently. Willy put his hand up to his own face and discovered the glasses, the one remaining fragment of the hard-to-forget Mr. Williams, still sitting stubbornly on his nose. He gave Charlie an immeasurably grateful look and took them off, folding them thoughtfully and tucking them into the pocket of his tailcoat.

“Goodnight, Charlie, Joe. I’ll see you tomorrow.” _If I survive,_ he didn’t say. His face must have said some part of it for him, though, because Charlie paused, hurried back, digging in his satchel and pulling out the scrap of mirror.

“You could give this to Mom,” he suggested, as he held it out. “Don’t worry, Mr. Wonka. She… from what she said at dinner, I think she just wants to make sure things are going to be okay. For- for all of us.”

“Thank you, Charlie,” said Mr. Wonka. “So do I.”

“She’s in her room, the third on the left just over there.” Joe informed him and then hesitated, a sideways look with his teeth slightly bared. “You may want to… tread cautiously.”  
  
Willy nodded his thanks with a bright smile and a confidence that was jury-rigged on the spot. He had never personally had to walk to the gallows before, but he was well known for his vivid imagination, and right now what he was confident in was that it was painting a rather accurate picture. His stomach gave a couple of wiggly jumps, which he patently ignored before crossing the room and gave the door a couple of smart raps with his knuckle.  
  
There was some movement in the room, a shuffle, something muttered and then: “Who is it?”  
  
“It’s me, Mr. Wonka.”  
  
There was a pause, a slight hesitation before he heard her say, “Come in.”  
  
Willy took a breath and opened the door.  
  
Sarah kept her face turned away, making a whole career of looking through an empty dresser drawer before moving on to the next one in a deliberate attempt to barely acknowledge the man standing in her doorway.  
  
“Did Joe take Charlie to his room?” she asked over her shoulder.

Crossing the threshold, Willy took off his hat, walking his fingers along the brim with exacting care as if he had an important task to do in measuring it with the span of his hand.

“Yes.” He cleared his throat, gave a single hard blink down into the depths of his hat, then set off in a rush.

“Mrs. Bucket, I seem to remember the last time we met I said something to the effect of, ‘I’m sorry if I was rude.’ Clearly, I should have said- I _want_ to say, I’m sorry _that_ I was rude... not to mention incredibly obnoxious, completely unreasonable and-” He took a sharp, halting breath. “Just- plain- mean.”

Sarah had stopped pretending to look for things in the drawers at this point, she stood, looking down into one and took a deep breath. She wasn’t one to hold a grudge, normally, as she _knew_ it was better to make up and move on.

But it wasn’t just the incident in the candy shop. Oh, that was part of it alright, maybe the deepest sore spot, but there were other ones that had welled up around it since then.

She looked over her shoulder at him. He looked sincere enough, and there was something disarming and boyish in the way he was fidgeting with his ridiculous hat. It would have made her smile except that her eyes were still wet with tears and something very empty had decided to move in to her chest earlier in the evening and hadn’t budged. She looked away with a sniff and tried to hide her hands as she swiped at her eyes.

“I’m glad. Charlie has school tomorrow and I need to get back in time to make sure he has breakfast.”

There was a long silence where neither of them moved and then Sarah turned, sharply around, trying to summon the sort of confidence she had found not so long ago in that horrid little shop at the end of the road.

“Thank you,” she said. “Will there be anything else?”

She’d been crying. It was obvious, as obvious as the fact that she didn’t want him to notice her reddened eyes and flushed face, or the sore dry knuckles of her hands as she tucked them away restlessly and turned down her threadbare sleeves. Willy normally would have taken his cue to ignore these things, out of manners more than anything else, but he felt he’d been guilty of quite enough deliberate blindness, recently.

Just as obvious was the sense that she wanted him to leave. He had no choice, really, but to take the hint. He’d apologized, she’d accepted his apology- there wasn’t much else that he could do, although it felt as if he’d left a lot undone. A part of him- an antsy, cowardly part that just wanted a reason to escape as soon as possible- told him that it wasn’t as if he needed to be friends with this woman, only to keep on a civil footing with her, for Charlie’s sake and the ease of working around her.

But there were things that were important, things that he couldn’t easily have defined, and one of them was that for nearly half a century he’d created and protected a place where everyone felt comfortable to be, a place without secrets, a charmed circle where if hard and unfair things happened they could be faced together. And to bring factions into the factory, to divide that unity, to go forwards with the thought at the back of his mind that such an important person to Charlie had to be circumnavigated and tiptoed around… it was like a wrong note, a sour resonance out of tune with his very soul. And even more than that, after this evening and the things he’d learned, it would be a disservice. It would be _unfair._

But a dismissal was a dismissal, and maybe for tonight it was best to leave things as they were. So he shook his head and let himself relax a little, and flipped his hat over, twirling it through his hands up onto his head in a little trick that came as naturally to him as a breath.

“No, no, I don’t mean to intrude. Goodnight, Mrs. Bucket...” He turned to go, then stopped, holding up a finger as he remembered, and reached into his pocket for the scrap of mirror, holding it out to her politely.

“I’ll leave you to _reflect,”_ he said, and gave a small, involuntary snicker, high up in his nose, purely at his own pun.

Sarah felt winded and wronged, empty as she raised her hands to take the scrap bit of mirror from him. It was an old thing, the edges worn down from years of handling and bumping against this or that in everyday motions. It had originally been a side mirror from a car, some vintage thing that had been nothing but a pile of scrap at the junkyard. The reflection was no longer entirely true, and it was shabby; probably something any other person would have thrown away. _It was junk,_ she knew, but it was hers.

Her hands trembled with upset and anger as her mind neatly slotted all the pieces together.

“You went to our house," she said. “You- You went to our house!” Sarah grimaced and clenched her hands. “How dare you. How dare you!” she yelled. “Wasn't it enough to humiliate me the first time? Didn’t it satisfy you?!”

A fresh, hot wave rolled over her, but this time she didn’t attempt to hide her tears as they welled up and overflowed. They burned hot, itchy tracks down her cheeks. However, in an instant her expression changed- from terribly angry to hopeless and wide eyed, stuttering in her tracks like a car nearly overshooting a stop sign.

“Oh my god. You saw-” she breathed, and she dragged her hand over her forehead. “You saw,” she said again. She struggled to breathe against her own upset, moving away from him and turning towards the large windows along the wall. The moonlight shone through them, beautiful and pale. Sarah had stared out them the last hour, from the overly large and comfortable bed she had been crying in. She clutched her head between her hands, the mirror still held by her fingers.

“Why are you doing this to me?”

“Sarah-” Utterly dismayed, Willy took a step forward, but even with her back turned he saw the hard little twitch of her head, the clear and outright rejection in the set of her shoulders, her hands. He could only back off, in both senses.

“Mrs. Bucket- the last thing I meant to do was...” He wasn’t even entirely sure _what_ he’d done. Upset her terribly, enraged and frightened her, all at once, with one flimsy joke? He of all people knew that words had power, but only the power people _gave_ them. She’d been upset, angry, afraid, before he’d even entered the room.

Some things just went bone-deep. Whatever sort of person he was- and for the last few hours he certainly hadn’t felt like a particularly nice one- watching another person start into tears as a result of something he’d said without a thought in the world to hurt them was absolutely terrible.

He wished she’d sit down. There was a tension in her that was painful even to look at. He didn’t dare say as much, and as a panacea he sat down instead, haltingly, against the dresser. That set the wide floor between them, the moonlight on them both, her shadow sharp and long and his own in a flat pool at his back, blended with the dark wood of the drawers, almost as if he had none.

“Charlie wanted to show me his scrapbook,” he said. He sounded as sucker-punched as he felt, for once, feeling his way blindly through a minefield made of words. “That’s all, that’s… I had no idea you’d feel this way.”

There was some silence that followed, and Sarah dropped her hands, picking out the dark blue craters against the moons pale, brilliant surface. She measured the day in all its events, twists and turns, looking for the right place to start.

“Today at the dry cleaners,” she began, “I saw Charlie on TV. And do you know what that- that _horrible_ woman on the news called him? A _loser_.”

The word felt so wrong she needed to say something else to be rid of its ugly shape in her mouth. “That woman decided on the spot he wasn’t going to win- that he wasn’t worthy of winning. I guess people like that can’t imagine what it’s like to be happy with what you have. Charlie _felt_ like a winner. And I don’t know… how can someone take the most wonderful thing in the world and make it so wrong? They don’t know anything about him. They showed the outside of our house on _national television_ and that awful man started talking about- about the tragedy of poverty. About what kind of a parent-”

She stopped herself. It was enough said for him to know, and some parts are too painful to expose, even if they are known. She turned then to look at him. Her long shadow fell next to him as if it were a strange companion, finding some respite from the light that had been thrown over her whole life, casting it in bare unapologetic contrast to what society felt good people ought to be. What a good parent ought to be.

He was watching her with such a look of compassion it made her feel vulnerable.

“So you see, I have had a very long day of _reflection,_ Mr. Wonka. I’ve been measured in every way possible, and it turns out I keep coming up short.”

Of course, the press had gone to the house. They’d descended upon the home of each of the Golden Ticket winners, from the gargantuan Salt estate in Novosibirsk to the relatively humble Teevee townhouse in peaceful little Middleton. Each of the winners and their families had revelled in the attention, and generally made such a song and dance out of their slice of the victory that it had barely occurred to Willy, an amused spectator of this media circus, that being shoved into the limelight in such a manner might be unwelcome.

Willy felt a sick sense of complicity and anger, tangled up together. “They don’t know,” he repeated, before he had much of a sense of what he intended to say, “they can’t know, they don’t have the capacity. _Colorblind.”_ He couldn’t help the way the word sounded, coming from him- full of tired contempt, like a kind of everyday blasphemy. “Because they can’t see how you’ve given Charlie more than I ever could. That’s what I saw- not just from your home, though I did, I did see it there- from the last month, from all of today. Charlie won… because he’s Charlie.” He spread his hands, spanning this self-evident fact as if it was a real thing they could both see. “And I'm sure you know- at least, I _hope_ you know, Mrs. Bucket...”

He blinked, and looked up at her.

“So much of that, is because of you.”

He hadn’t even reached his conclusion before Sarah had pressed her mouth into a hard line and begun to shake her head.

“Charlie has the Bucket blood in him. He’s always been that way, he can’t help it. That’s his father’s doing, not mine.” Sarah held on to the ring on her necklace, worrying her thumb over it as she bit her lip. She was flattered to know that he thought some part of her was responsible for the small wonderful person that was her son, and that he seemed to think so much of Charlie himself.

She looked over him again. He looked so different now than he had in that shop. Younger and far more ridiculous, dressed like a ringmaster from a dated circus. She wondered if he wore that on purpose; a disguise, in as much as the fictional shopkeeper had been. Some veneer he had put between himself and everyone else, something he wanted to project rather than what exactly he was. Because here and now he didn’t seem like a showman, or a horrid shopkeeper, or at all like somebody who came to tear apart someone they barely knew just for the fun of it.

He was bent slightly, his gestures open and his voice honest, as he listened with intensity, a focus and genuine interest that she hadn’t experienced in a very long time.

“And he adores you," she said. “That’s what really worries me, you know. It was fine when you were some fictional being, who lived in a tower, but you’re here now and I don’t know who you are; what kind of a man you are, and… I want to get to know you.”

The words formed before she had much time to think about them, but once said she knew they were true.

“I do accept your apology for what happened in the shop, I _do,”_ she continued. “But it wasn’t a great start. And it’s lead me to read unfavourable signs in everything. How do I know you aren’t going to just change your mind about all of this?”

It was a hard question for Willy to hear, but he knew it was completely fair for her to ask. She had no reason to trust his sincerity, and really, it was a small miracle that Charlie didn’t feel the same way. He’d misled the boy deliberately enough, for a lot longer, through a great many fickle twists and turns, and God, the more he thought on it, he realised he could only _hope_ Charlie didn’t feel the same way. Even the possibility made him feel completely miserable, and if it was true he would only have himself to blame.

In the short silence, he laced his fingers together around his knee, nodding a little. “Legally,” he said, turning his gaze up towards the glorious silvery slice of the moon, like someone reading a lesson by rote, “the new deed of ownership will need to be signed in front of a notary. With witnesses present. And then it’ll be filed on public record. Since Charlie is a minor, it’ll technically be in trust until he’s of age, so before then, right of survivorship will rest with you. That’s for when _I_ kick the bucket.”

His line of sight caught hers again, and he smiled, although it was a difficult, sombre shade of his usual grin. It felt like pulling some vital, inner part of his heart out by the root, showing it to her like something pinned to a corkboard, laying out in these bare rigid, _worldly_ terms his plan for the most important thing in his world.

“I don’t usually deal with lawyers,” he said. “I hadn’t consulted mine in a few decades- actually, I was surprised to learn that I still _had_ one. But for this, I made an exception.”

Sarah searched him for any sign that he was aware he had used a very ill-chosen expression considering she had just mentioned her late husband, albeit obliquely. But his face lacked malice, and it occurred to her that Mr. Wonka suffered from two conditions- a love of expression and word play, and abysmal timing with both. She made a mental note to try to be forgiving of this. Better to forgive, she thought, than to have to explain manslaughter.

What she _could_ sense from him though was something she could only catch glimpses of in his look- something he seemed to be trying to communicate without having to put into words. And from where she stood it looked an awful lot like sadness, and Sarah knew sadness. She knew the depths of it, and it’s strange and varied forms. And she knew what it was like to have to deal with it alone. She couldn’t bear to let anyone, even a taxing fickle stranger, feel it without some help.

Sarah crossed the room and leaned back with him against the dresser. Her eyes mapped the tired lines under his eyes before meeting them, and she placed her hand tentatively against his arm and said nothing.

His breath hitched, although he didn’t show much of a reaction beyond a shift in his shoulders, a subtle re-focus and a lightening of his expression.

He wondered if she thought Charlie’s empathy, his compassion for anybody in need, came from his father as well. So often, people missed things about themselves that were so obvious to others, and it was clearly the case that Sarah had somehow missed the link between Charlie’s own spirit of creativity and the reinventions and transformations she worked every single day, even though the evidence was everywhere, floor to ceiling in the tiny house, making it a home. To anybody who might have written off this kind of ingenuity as mundane, who might just have said that, in such desperate straits, necessity was the mother of invention, Willy would have said, _try it sometime._

“I want to ask if you’d do something for me,” he said. “I know, I understand, you don’t have much of a reason to trust any of this, yet, but...”

He turned to face her, gently and briefly covering her hand with his as he stepped back- an acknowledgement of her kind touch, not a dismissal of it.

“Stay here tonight. We can square it with Mrs. Walinski, if we need to.”

He hoped like hell that she wouldn’t take his asking as another affront, some thoughtless flaunt of his influence, although he had to admit his track record at this point was terrible.

“Forgive me, but... you look like you could do with the rest.”

His hand was much bigger than hers, warm and unblemished, such a contrast to her own, thin and dry with the nails weak from hours spent in soapy water. She felt caught staring when their eyes met again, but then her brain made sense of his words and she felt an anxious terror grip her.

It was tempting to stay, horribly tempting. There was food here, and warmth, and a private en-suite bathroom which she had spied on her initial exploration of the room and that she hadn’t had the courage yet to even consider the possibility of.

And she was tired, deeply so. Every aspect of her life had been thrown off kilter, and she felt like a marble on a warble plate that had only just begun to find level ground.

To stay here tonight was tempting, but foolish.

“I-I can’t miss work, Mr. Wonka.” Without realizing it she was picking at her cardigan again, worrying it between her fingers, and she wiped the remnants of her tears from her face with the backside of her wrist. “Mrs. Walinski will be short-staffed. It’s- It’s not a matter of squaring anything. It wouldn’t be responsible.”

“Well, we couldn’t have that,” he said, seriously. “Let’s see…” He considered the problem for a moment or two, before a dynamic light dawned and he snapped his fingers, the index flicking out into a pointer aimed through the window, down towards the shadows and sparse lighted windows of the town.

“Temps Twenty-Four,” he said. “It’s in Amundsen Street, we passed them earlier. We give them a call, we’ll have your shift covered in ten minutes, tops. Simplicity itself, if-”

His burst of action, the energy with which he painted the idea, braked and halted on a dime as he lowered his hand, looking back to where she stood.

“If… that works for you. Honestly, it’s really the least I can do, considering...”

He winced with his entire face and shoulders, a deep, deliberate, and characteristically cartoonish grimace that managed to evoke everything, from their first meeting in the shop, to his tone-deaf words, to the way that the chaotic and thoughtless wake of his life had, in the space of one day, completely swamped and capsized hers.

“...Considering,” he finished, quietly.

“That’s… that’s very kind of you.” It was also damnably reasonable and frustrating in some ways that he could just _do that._ Sarah felt a strange resentment and struggled to imagine what it would be like to be such a person, to have money and fame and a world that swayed when you asked it to.

And then she reminded herself that she _forgave_ him. And forgiveness isn’t just a word, it’s a decision to trust, to look with a kinder eye, and to let go of past hurts.

It was an effort for her to push down her fear and anxiety and summon the right words to say. He was offering so much, and all he was asking was for her to stay home from work for one night.

She felt like she might be sick even as she spoke.

“Okay,” she said, and the word trembled from her mouth with the strength of a ghost.

Her hands shook, and she hid them. When she caught his eye she felt foolish and she tried to explain.

“I’ve never missed a day of work in my life, not even when Arthur… the thought of losing work… you don’t understand how frightening it is…” She reached out again, this time for her own sake, taking his forearm. “But thank you,” she said quickly, in case he took it as a bad sign. And then she found the words that she had been wanting to say when she had watched his face express without words their short and rough calamity of a history.

“If all of this is as you say it is, then you did what I couldn’t. You _saved my family,”_ she said. “I don’t want our relationship ruined by a bad start. I forgave you, and I forgive you, and I owe you an apology as well.” She let go of his arm. “Do you remember what I said earlier about… about how could anyone take something so good and make it bad? Well… I think that’s what I’ve been doing since I got here, with you and with… everything. I’m very sorry I shouted at you, I don’t normally shout at people, or cry myself silly in front of them… or demand to speak to their managers over a forty-three year old coupon.”

Instead of replying at once, he reached into his pocket and took out his glasses- Mr. Williams’ glasses- setting them down on the bureau at his side with a dull little _click-clack_ of lacquer on wood. There was a finality to the sound, the way they lay there, arms cross-folded crookedly, like a dead beetle.

“I’d like to think we both took each other the wrong way,” he said. “Got off on the wrong foot, just one of those things, but that’s not-” He took a sharp, irregular breath. “Quite true. I don’t... know how to explain myself to you. It’s been a very long time since I’ve had to explain myself to anybody,” he went on, quickly, before he could lose momentum, or worse, catch up with himself and hear how this sounded- how it had to sound, to her. “I’m not an easy study. And I _didn’t_ come at all of this by the most straightforward route, or the easiest, and I can see now how I...”

He looked down at their shoes, his perfect piebald spats and her patched work boots, trying to marshal his thoughts. What he couldn’t tell her was how necessary it had all felt. Behind the stingy cynic of a shopkeeper and the unapologetic showman, and all the other facades and facets, he stood, happy to throw anything out into the world as long as it never had the opportunity to throw anything back. Behind the walls he’d built, he’d been able to tell himself very convincingly that he wasn’t afraid; only on his guard, awake and amused by the whole humdrum human spectacle.

He claimed to know the world. It took someone like Charlie, like Sarah, to pierce right through the whole bundle of self-satisfied sophistry and make him see exactly who he really was- a reluctant misanthrope, scared of the world, scared of it knowing _him._

“No more masks,” he said, “no more tricks. I can’t promise there won’t be surprises, but...” He spread his hand, encapsulating the factory, the room, this fragile truce, this moment in time.

“I hope we can make this work. I think we can,” he said, earnestly. “I really do.”

She listened as he half-explained his intentions and her misconception of the situation. His thoughts felt heavy to her; submerged, and difficult for him to trudge up, and they all seemed to point inward at some focal point in him, like harsh paths converging in a dark maze.

But as he reached his conclusion she understood a decision had been made. Something in him was felled, some wall pushed over, and now all that lay between them were rocks; the rough beginnings of a road that only needed tamping and time.

A gentle affability settled over her and Sarah reached for him again, she was beginning to see that he might need someone to do that sort of thing, and she took his warm hand in a firm handshake.

“I do too,” she agreed, her own eyes turned upward to meet his. “I do too.”


End file.
